Milo

March 1

“Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked. (Eccles. 7:13.)

OFTEN God seems to place His children in positions of profound difficulty, leading them into a wedge from which there is no escape; contriving a situation which no human judgment would have permitted, had it been previously consulted. The very cloud conducts them thither. You may be thus involved at this very hour.
It does seem perplexing and very serious to the last degree, but it is perfectly right. The issue will more than justify Him who has brought you hither. It is a platform for the display of His almighty grace and power.
He will not only deliver you; but in doing so. He will give you a lesson that you will never forget, and to which, in many a psalm and song, in after days, you will revert. You will never be able to thank God enough for having done just as He has.
—Selected.

  “We may wait till He explains,
  Because we know that Jesus reigns.”

It puzzles me; but, Lord, Thou understandest,
And wilt one day explain this crooked thing.
Meanwhile, I know that it has worked out Thy best—
Its very crookedness taught me to cling.

Thou hast fenced up my ways, made my paths crooked,
To keep my wand’ring eyes fixed on Thee;
To make me what I was not, humble, patient;
To draw my heart from earthly love to Thee.

So I will thank and praise Thee for this puzzle,
And trust where I cannot understand.
Rejoicing Thou dost hold me worth such testing,
I cling the closer to Thy guiding hand.
—F. E. M. I.

March 5th

Is he really Lord?

… so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus. Acts 20:24.

Joy means the perfect fulfilment of that for which I was created and regenerated, not the successful doing of a thing. The joy Our Lord had lay in doing what the Father sent Him to do, and He says—“As My Father hath sent Me, even so am I sending you.” Have I received a ministry from the Lord? If so, I have to be loyal to it, to count my life precious only for the fulfilling of that ministry. Think of the satisfaction it will be to hear Jesus say—“Well done, good and faithful servant”; to know that you have done what He sent you to do. We have all to find our niche in life, and spiritually we find it when we receive our ministry from the Lord. In order to do this we must have companied with Jesus; we must know Him as more than a personal Saviour. “I will show him how great things he must suffer for My sake.”
“Lovest thou Me?” Then—“Feed My sheep.” There is no choice of service, only absolute loyalty to Our Lord’s commission; loyalty to what you discern when you are in closest contact with God. If you have received a ministry from the Lord Jesus, you will know that the need is never the call: the need is the opportunity. The call is loyalty to the ministry you received when you were in real touch with Him. This does not imply that there is a campaign of service marked out for you, but it does mean that you will have to ignore the demands for service along other lines.

“The great word of Jesus to his disciples is abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on his word; trust entirely to him and watch that when he brings us to the venture, we take it.”

“I feel I shall be buried for a time, hidden away in obscurity; then suddenly I shall flame out, do my work, and be gone.” So wrote 22-year-old Oswald Chambers as he began his long preparation in a remote Scottish town before being thrust into the world as a preacher. He was partially right; after 15 years of public ministry, Chambers died suddenly at age 43. But he remains far from gone—his devotional My Utmost for His Highest (sermons published posthumously, like nearly 50 other devotionals bearing his name) remains one of the most popular devotional guides ever printed.

Portrait of an artist

Born as a Baptist preacher’s son in Aberdeen, Scotland, Chambers converted under the preaching of Charles Spurgeon. In his twenties, he sought to portray the message of God’s redemption in art, studying technique in London and Edinburgh.

Gradually Chambers began to believe God wanted him not to pursue the arts for God’s sake, but God for the sake of his will alone. As he later wrote, “It takes me a long while to realize that God has no respect for anything I bring him. All he wants from me is unconditional surrender.”

His decision led him to Dunoon College, a small, interdenominational theological school. It wasn’t long before Chambers himself began to believe, like family members and his artist colleagues, he was foolish—or insane. During those “four years of hell on earth,” Chambers continued his work but inside felt overcome by an acute vision of his own depravity and the powerlessness of his faith.

The experience brought Chambers to the brink of spiritual desperation. He threw himself completely on Jesus’ promise that God would give his Spirit to those who ask. The struggle was instantly over. Chambers later described the restult: “Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God.”

A brief, shining light

Soon after his “spiritual emancipation,” Chambers became much in demand as an itinerant speaker and teacher through the revivalistic League of Prayer.

Because Chambers believed that spiritual mediocrity was often the result of mental lethargy, he opened the Bible Training College with the League in 1911. When World War I interrupted academic life, Chambers enlisted as a chaplain to the armed forces. In October 1915, he proceeded to Zeitoun, Egypt, where he and his wife evangelized soldiers.

Whether speaking to soldiers or students, Chambers called his listeners to live aggressively for God. God’s will, he said, can be found in any circumstance of life, so long as individuals are willing to have a personal relationship with Christ and completely abandon themselves to him. “The great word of Jesus to his disciples is abandon,” he wrote. “When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on his word; trust entirely to him and watch that when he brings us to the venture, we take it.”

His utmost

A ruptured appendix and consequent complications cut Chambers’s life short in late 1917. It seemed an unbelievably tragic end to a life of promise. But it wasn’t the end. His wife, whose ambition to become secretary to England’s prime minister prompted her to acquire an astonishing skill at shorthand, transcribed and published Chambers’s lectures. She sent them in pamphlet form to many soldiers to whom Chambers had ministered, as well as to past students. Soon she gathered the material into book form and, in 1927, she first published My Utmost for His Highest.

March 4th

Could this be true of me?

But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself. Acts 20:24.

It is easier to serve God without a vision, easier to work for God without a call, because then you are not bothered by what God requires; common sense is your guide, veneered over with Christian sentiment. You will be more prosperous and successful, more leisure-hearted, if you never realize the call of God. But if once you receive a commission from Jesus Christ, the memory of what God wants will always come like a goad; you will no longer be able to work for Him on the commonsense basis.
What do I really count dear? If I have not been gripped by Jesus Christ, I will count service dear, time given to God dear, my life dear unto myself. Paul says he counted his life dear only in order that he might fulfil the ministry he had received; he refused to use his energy for any other thing. Acts 20:24 states Paul’s almost sublime annoyance at being asked to consider himself; he was absolutely indifferent to any consideration other than that of fulfilling the ministry he had received. Practical work may be a competitor against abandonment to God, because practical work is based on this argument—‘Remember how useful you are here,’ or—‘Think how much value you would be in that particular type of work.’ That attitude does not put Jesus Christ as the Guide as to where we should go, but our judgment as to where we are of most use. Never consider whether you are of use; but ever consider that you are not your own but His.

March 3rd

The unrelieved quest

Feed My sheep. John 21:17.

This is love in the making. The love of God is un-made, it is God’s nature. When we receive the Holy Spirit He unites us with God so that His love is manifested in us. When the soul is united to God by the indwelling Holy Spirit, that is not the end; the end is that we may be one with the Father as Jesus was. What kind of oneness had Jesus Christ with the Father? Such a oneness that the Father sent him down here to be spent for us, and He says—“As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”
Peter realizes now with the revelation of the Lord’s hurting question that he does love Him; then comes the point—Spend it out. Don’t testify how much you love Me, don’t profess about the marvellous revelation you have had, but—“Feed My sheep.” And Jesus has some extraordinarily funny sheep, some bedraggled, dirty sheep, some awkward butting sheep, some sheep that have gone astray! It is impossible to weary God’s love, and it is impossible to weary that love in me if it springs from the one centre. The love of God pays no attention to the distinctions made by natural individuality. If I love my Lord I have no business to be guided by natural temperament; I have to feed His sheep. There is no relief and no release from this commission. Beware of counterfeiting the love of God by working along the line of natural human sympathy, because that will end in blaspheming the love of God.